‘Magical Thinking with David Parr’ is a Bewitching Act to Behold

“Magical Thinking with David Parr” invites skeptics and believers alike to an alluring display of illusions.

With the show taking place at the spellbinding speakeasy The Chicago Magic Lounge, magician David Parr unveils his latest set of deception. Hidden behind a fake laundromat in Andersonville, The Lounge reveals a stage of comedy, bafflement and wonder.

“I’ve been thinking about magic for 50 years,” Parr said. “We find joy in imagining the impossible — is possible.”

From the start of the show, Parr establishes a tone of goodwill and mysticism. With delivery akin to a stand-up comic, Parr brings the audience on a magical journey through personal recounts and historical oddities.

His first act, and a recurring motif of the night, was switching a set of playing cards between hands — without visibly moving them. The humble yet effective feat set the bar for straightforward illusions lacking obvious explanations.

Parr followed the act with a much more alarming trick to witness. After tying a thick rope around his neck, Parr instructed two audience members to pull from both ends. However, where the rope should have squeezed his neck tight, it miraculously jumped through his neck to tie itself into a knot before him.

“There are two types of people in the audience at any magic show,” Parr said. “The first type enjoys giving themselves over to the experience — the second type sees magic as a puzzle that demands a solution.”

The rope passing through his body without harm, along with the lighthearted card trick before lent the show an air of mischief. Parr further fueled the high jinks with hypnotic crowd work.

Taking another member from the crowd, Parr handed a paper with “Puppeteer” boldly lettered. Instructing the member to commit the word to memory, Parr dimmed the lights and looked deeply into their eyes. Reciting a story regarding a puppet and his master, Parr commanded the participant to blink with him.

Reciting the word from before, the participant could only swear it was “Forgotten.”

“Just after my 7th birthday, I received a magic set,” Parr said. “I don’t think I’d be standing here right now if I had not received that magic set.”

Between the tricks of memory and object permanence, David performed a handful of novelty tricks from his childhood with striking skill. One of the most impressive involved a hand-signed card from the audience being torn and reformed while retaining its signature, yet mystically changing its suit.

His last feat with the cards stood apart for being more than a trick — but a seeming impossibility.

“Synchnacity, a meaningful coincidence that’s so unlikely or uncanny it stays in the memory,” Parr said. “That will be our goal tonight.”

Bringing another member of the crowd, Parr’s instructions appeared rather simple as a game of repeat-after-me. Giving the participant their own deck, Parr shuffled his pile face-down while the audience member did the same. Placing a single card into each other’s stack, the two traded hands of the piles to show one card resting apart in each — revealing them to be the same number and suit.

Without touching the participant’s deck, Parr had orchestrated them to place the same card as him. The odds of such an occurrence are 1 to 2,704, making Parr either extremely lucky or beyond expertly skilled.

Famed magicians Penn and Teller believe the latter. Parr recited his success in pulling the trick over the performance duo on their show “Penn & Teller: Fool Us,” bringing his trophy on stage.

“I fooled them so completely that they didn’t even have a guess as to how I did it,” Parr said. “I had never seen that happen on the show before.”

Parr ended the show with his most baffling feat. Taking a large handheld mirror, he passed it around the audience to prove its durability then tucked it into an envelope. Without even the sound of glass breaking, he punctured the mirror with a metal rod and bent it in half. Unbending it, Parr removed the mirror from its envelope without so much as a scratch on it. 

The simplicity of Parr enveloping the mirror, only to wildly contort it and return it undamaged is a bewildering wonder to behold.

David Parr is a charismatic showman who can befuddle puzzle solvers and entrance magic fanatics. His show at the Chicago Magic Lounge delights with his endearing deposition and confounding trickery.

Parr closed his show with a simple adage, “Keep thinking magical thoughts.”

“Magical Thinking with David Parr,” runs for nine shows between July 24th and Sept. 25th. Tickets are available through the Chicago Magic Lounge’s website.

David Parr shares no relation to author Brendan Parr.

Featured image courtesy of the Chicago Magic Lounge.